The Witness of Athanasius

There is Athanasius too, priest of the city of Alexandria, a splendid example of steadfastness and virtue. The storm of heretical persecution tested him but did not crush him. His life was always like clear glass, and he had almost won the reward of martyrdom before he reached the rank of a Confessor. Let us see what he thought of the Lord Jesus Christ and of the mother of the Lord. “This, then,” he says, “is the purpose and the stamp of Holy Scripture, as we have often said: that in one and the same Savior two things have to be understood. First, that he was always God, and is the Son, the Word, the Light and the Wisdom of the Father. And second, that afterward for our sakes he took flesh of the Virgin Mary, the Theotokos, and was made man.” Again, after some other matters: “Many, then, were saints and clean from sin. Jeremiah too was sanctified from the womb, and John, while still in the womb, leaped for joy at the voice of Mary, the Theotokos.” [a]

He clearly says that God, the Son of God, who, to state the faith of all in his own words, is “the Word, the Light and the Wisdom of the Father,” took flesh for our sakes. And for that reason he calls the Virgin Mary Theotokos, because she was the Mother of God.